Daily Links 03 November 2004

Make of it what you will: A 46-year old man was bitten at the Taipei Zoo after jumping into a lion’s den in an attempt to convert the beasts to Christianity.

Myth Replacement

Greg Grieve, a Fellow at NYU’s Center for Religion and Media, comments: “[a colleague] and I have been talking about ‘moral values’ all morning. And it seems to us that it is working as an empty signifier, similar to Barthes‘ notion of ‘myth,’ onto which people are projecting their conceptions. As Barthes writes in ‘Myth Today’: ‘The signifier presents itself in an ambiguous way: it is at the same time meaning and form, full on one side and empty on the other.’ (117) As the Russian saying goes: ‘A sacred space is never empty.’ There seems to be a need for two steps: (1) to debunk the Myth of moral values, and then (2) to craft a new ‘myth’ that democrats can control for progressive ends.”

My Pastor, My Boss

Christianity Today‘s Ted Olsen offers an erudite gloss on last Sunday’s NYT Mag cover story on religion at work that in some ways is better than the feature itself, and that was good, too. Strangely missing from both feature and gloss, though, is any evident concern for labor concerns. How, for example, would a union work in a shop where the boss is also the pastor?

The Value of Moral Values

#1 issue for American voters overall? Exit polls say… “moral values.” And, according to Cokie Roberts on NPR, 80% of moral valuing voters went for the President. But on the coasts, voters say… Iraq. War — especially when and how to fight it — might also be considered a matter of moral values, but then, “moral values” sometimes means more — or less — than moral values. Will the press offer some definitions?